Welcome to the feedHopper Users Guide! feedHopper allows you to download and read RSS feeds and tweets. What is a feed? Twitter accounts, web sites, and blogs typically experience one or more updates a day, and you may find yourself “hopping” to and from your favorite web sites to check for new posts. Most web sites today publish their updates in a format called “RSS” or “ATOM”. They typically advertise this fact somewhere on their site, usually with an orange “RSS” icon of sorts. With feedHopper! you can peruse all of your favorite websites’ updates with the push of a button. You will be notified which of your websites have new articles, and can read them in a highly readable format directly within the application. You can even visit the full original article on the web, or interact with web links and images of the articles, including playing any attached podcasts.

1.2 introduced full text article creation (use it for feeds that provide only “teasers” for their articles).
If you come across a feed that only has partial articles, you can enable this option by editing the feed properties and select the subcategory “RSS Content”. Here, switch Full Articles to ON. Doing this will slow down refreshes a bit. Let us know how it works out for you.

1.3 introduced Internet Search for feeds
To search for new feeds, touch “+”, and then select “Internet Feed Search!”. In the resulting window, just enter your search criteria such as “New York Giants”. Recall this is a true internet search for feeds (different than a search for web articles).

1.4 introduced categories (folders).
To add a folder, touch “+” and then select “Add Category”. You can add feeds and webpages and twitter accounts to any folder (even more than one if you so wish).

For example, you can create a category called “Sports” and one called “News”. An ESPN feed may fall into both, while CNN headlines may fall only into “News”.

Deleting a folder will not delete the feeds within, they will simply be disassociated with that category.

2.1 introduced new podcast capabilitie, multitouch gestures, and wizards.
For offline podcasts (or if your feed is not compatible with streaming podcasts), you can turn streaming off in your feed preferences using the new Podcast category.

New multitouch gestures are available when reading an article or web page:
* Three-finger double-tap toggles widescreen view
* Two-finger swipe left or right navigates you to the next or previous article
* Three-finger swipe left or right navigates you to the bottom or top of the article list

Here is a video tutorial for the latest 4.x version
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C8yxYCJS9k

Here is a video tutorial on enabling and using Reading Mode
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e9Lt9yVvWw

Here is a forum post providing links to up-to-date tutorials and videos:Tutorials Post

NOTE BELOW THIS POINT THE GUIDE IS FOR v1.0 AND IS OUT OF DATE, BUT IS KEPT HERE TO GET A GENERAL FEEL FOR HOW THE APP WORKS.

feedHopper allows you to download and read RSS feeds and tweets. What is a feed? Twitter accounts, web sites, and blogs typically experience one or more updates a day, and you may find yourself “hopping” to and from your favorite web sites to check for new posts. Most web sites today publish their updates in a format called “RSS” or “ATOM”. They typically advertise this fact somewhere on their site, usually with an orange “RSS” icon of sorts. With feedHopper! you can peruse all of your favorite websites’ updates with the push of a button. You will be notified which of your websites have new articles, and can read them in a highly readable format directly within the application. You can even visit the full original article on the web, or interact with web links and images of the articles, including playing any attached podcasts.

But feedHopper has more tricks up its sleeve than a simple reader. You can search across all of your downloaded articles as easily as using Spotlight. You can even configure how many articles or tweets you want to keep per entry. And yes, there is also the matter of Twitter integration. Not only can you subscribe to and read Twitter user posts, you can enter your own Twitter account in the settings page and can then “tweet” any article or web page you like, or compose a Twitter reply when reading someone else’s tweet.

Read on through this tour of the application, and please provide any feedback if we missed something

Getting Started

When you first start feedHopper, you are provided some sample feeds and a Twitter user (In this case, the XBox team’s Major Nelson). You can of course edit or remove them as you see fit, but they give you the general idea of the wide variety of information out there in RSS formats. If you ever delete and re-install feedHopper, the sample feeds will return.

This first run also prompts an automatic download of web content. From now on, you will be in control of downloading by pressing on the refresh button in the upper-right corner of the main list page. Lets go over the anatomy of the main page now. Below is an image of what startup looks like in landscape. You see your main panel on the left and the dyerware logo on an empty detail panel on the right:

Starting up in Landscape

If you start up in portrait, you will see only the empty detail pane with the dyerware logo, however the toolbar is as follows:

Portrait Toolbar

If you click on that upper-left button, you will be provided your main list window in a popover. Dismiss the popover by just touching anywhere on the screen away from it. So with feedHopper you can rotate your iPad in any orientation. In Landscape, you get two sides: Your selection list (or “main list”) on the left, and the detail view on the right. In Portrait, you get one view, the “detail view”. To get the list as you would see it in landscape, just remember that upper-left button.

If you get confused, please contact us. We will be glad to help you.

The Main List

The Main List

Lets talk a bit about that main list. This is the heart of the application: Your list of favorite feeds, web pages, and twitter users. You can rearrange them, rename them, add new ones, delete them, etc. But before we get into managing it, lets talk about how you will be using it day-to-day.

You can see in the Main List picture on the left that there are two areas highlighted in red: A refresh button in the upper right, and a toolbar at the bottom. Any time you want feedHopper to check the internet for updates to your items, just touch that refresh button. The feeds will all animate to indicate they are downloading. As feeds complete this process, they will indicate to you any new content or not.

The little Mail-style indicators to the right of the entries that contain numbers indicate to you the number of unread articles. If the indicator is green, then newly downloaded content has been received. If the indicator is gray, the content is not new, but there are unread articles.

Touching one of the items in the list will take you to that item. If the item is an ordinary website (i.e. not a feed), the website will appear in the detail view. If however that item is a feed or twitter user, the list of articles (or tweets) is provided on the detail view, as shown below:

Browsing Articles in Landscape

Browsing Articles in Portrait

Lets talk about that toolbar at the bottom of the main list. It contains a series of important options. Much more will be said of these in later sections of the user guide.

• The Checkmark will allow you to quickly mark all content as read.
• The Question mark pops up a list of support and help options, such as quick links to our support forum.
• The Plus button is for adding an item to your main list. You will be presented lots of options. See the section on Configuring feedhopper.
• The Filing Cabinet is for rearranging and managing your list. See the section on Configuring feedhopper.
• The Gear is for global settings. See the section on Configuring feedhopper.

Built-in Search Items

There is one more special thing about the main list. There are some special auto-search helper entries that you can move and rearrange, but cannot remove, as shown on the left.

These allow you to view articles across your entire list of RSS feeds in a variety of ways. You will find out later how to flag an article, or vault it. But for now understand that clicking on these items here will take you to articles from any feed in feedHopper that matches the criteria. So for example, to quickly look at all of your unread articles at once, you could just touch “Unread Articles”, rather than visit each of your entries that contain unread items.

Reading Articles

To read the contents of an item, just select it from the Main List panel. At this point the Detail View on your right (or the main view in Portrait mode) becomes a list of articles and a search bar at the top.

Note the two lone toolbar buttons: A trashcan and a checkmark. The checkmark will quickly mark all content in this feed as read, while the trashcan will delete them.

Note that you do NOT have to delete items in feedHopper. They will be purged as new articles come in. To increase the amount of storage for a feed or twitter account, edit the feed properties from the Main List panel. The delete option is more for debug and diagnostic help should you be experiencing problems and support recommends this action.

To read an article, touch it. The Main List is swept aside as the item’s Article List supplants it:

Reading Articles

In the Detail view is your article. Note that the article is also highlighted in the Article List. You can go back at any time to the Main List by touching the Main button in the upper left next to the item’s title.

On the right side (or the main page in Portrait mode), at the top is a set of numbers (in the example above “4 of 27”), and two special up/down arrows. If you are viewing a feed or the results of a search the number tells you where you are in the results and the total number of articles within the search results. The up/down buttons allow you to quickly walk the next and previous articles.

Each article begins with a header of information consisting of the article title, its publication date, and the entry icon you have associated with the entry (and is also shown on the main page).

Below the header is the article body itself. Some articles, such as tweets, are merely header titles. If this is the case, any URLs within the tweet become selectable. Other articles however may be rich in web content including links, images, and even movies. All are playable or selectable within this page (provided restriction options allow it — more on that later).

Now we review the button bar at the bottom as it has some important features:

1) The TV button. If the article contains an attachment such as a movie or audio stream, you can play it by selecting this button. The iPads full-screen is used to show the content (or audio controls). It may take a few seconds before content starts playing, so be a bit patient. However once it does start playing, you will have all of the usual iPod playback controls (pause, rewind, etc).

2) The Tweet/Tweet Reply button. If you are reading a feed and have configured your Twitter account with feedHopper (on the settings page), then this button is selectable. Touching it will first prompt you, and should you approve, the article is tweeted to your Twitter account. Article tweets include the title and a tiny URL.

If you are reading a tweet and wish to reply back to the user (and have your Twitter account configured), the button is again unghosted but also has a reply indicator. Touching it will bring up a Compose Reply window. Here, you may type your message back to the user and either hit “Cancel” in the upper right to abort, or hit the “Send” button on the keypad to send the message. Given the size-limited nature of Twitter messages you are provided the number of characters remaining count above and to the right of the message area.

3) The Compose button. This button will allow you to email an article or tweet to anyone you wish. Email occurs within feedHopper, including access to your contacts database. Note that the email will contain the article title (or tweet) in the subject, the article link in the body, and the article body itself including any rich HTML content should there be any.

4) The Padlock button. This button saves a copy of the article to your Article Vault, a special reserved entry on the main page where you can place articles you want to keep long-term. As usual, you are prompted first.

5) The Flag button. Toggle this button to mark or unmark the article for later reading. You can easily revisit all flagged articles from a special entry on the main page. This is a convenient feature for when you find yourself quickly scanning articles and see one or two you want to spend more time with later on.

6) The Link button. This button takes you to the feedHopper built-in web browser to view the article in its original form. You can also jump into the web browser by touching on any link within an article.
Also note that the body of the article can contain URL links. Clicking on them will also engage the internal feedHopper web browser.

Selecting and Searching Articles

One of the powerful features of feedHopper is the ability to search across all of your stored articles. From the Main List, select any of the magnifying-glass auto-search options at the bottom, or any feed item. Auto-searches start you out with articles across the entire database with some criteria (such as being unread or flagged), while selecting an item will bring up just that item’s articles.

Your starting point for a search is the search bar at the top of the Article List:

Searching Articles

When you select the search bar, feedHopper changes to show a keyboard and some search buttons. Touching “cancel” will remove the search criteria and return the Article Search to its original content.

As you type, feedHopper changes the articles being shown in real time to those that meet your search criteria. You can control what parts of the article will be searched: The title, the body, or both.

Browsing Webpages

The web browser contains a few features worth mentioning. It is invoked whenever you launch an entry from your main page that happens to be a web link, or when you touch on a link within an article, or when you wish to visit the web page for a particular article. Lets take a tour of the page:

Options for a Web Page

If you arrive on a web page from an article, the article list is still shown on the left, with the article highlighted in blue. You can return to the article (or any article on the left) by touching it.

If you arrive here by selecting a website from the Main List, then the Main List items are shown on the left.

At the very top of the webpage is the URL. You can edit the URL directly if you wish. The button to the right of the URL can appear in two styles: A blue reload button for reloading the current page, and a red stop button which allows you to abort the loading of a web page.

Interacting with the web content works just as in your iPad Safari browser: Pinch and zoom, pan, and touching on items all are identical. To copy items such as graphics or links to your clipboard, touch and hold down for a few seconds to receive the special clipboard menu.

The button bar along the bottom contains some interesting options for you:
1) The left and right buttons. These offer traditional “back” and “forward” web page navigation.

2) The Menu button. This launches a submenu offering a series of actions you may want to take for the current web page (the menu popover is shown in the picture). Here, you can tweet the web page (the page Title and link will be included), email the link, or add the website to your front page. Each option will prompt you prior to taking action.

Configuring feedHopper

feedHopper is a flexible application, but we have tried to break down the complexity by taking advantage of the iPad’s organization features and larger screen size.

Global Settings

The Gear button on the Main List panel will bring up a global settings page. Below is a screen of this panel:

Twitter Account Setup

There are a series of settings categories down the left side: Twitter, Display, Restrictions, and Export. Export is not really a setting, but it was included here to avoid clutter in the main application.

You can enter your twitter account information on the Twitter page. By doing so, the twitter button will be enabled on certain pages where you can tweet directly from feedHopper. If you do not have twitter, this functionality is strictly optional.

Below is the display settings page:

Display Settings

Here, you can configure some aspects of how articles are presented. For example, if you do not care for the graphical thumbnails you can turn them off. This will also increase download / refresh speed. If you wish articles to be sorted oldest first, you can make that change here as well.

And below we have a screenshot of the Restrictions settings:

Restrictions Settings

Here, you can enable or disable restrictions. If restrictions are enabled, you will be presented with a dialog to enter a 4-digit PIN (shown in the image to the right).

Enabling Restrictions

If enabled, you can now pin-lock various features of the application to make it safe for children or secure your configuration from others. For example if you lend our iPad to a friend and you don’t want him or her to tweet articles using your account, you can pin-lock the twitter features. The list is quite useful: you can pin-lock any email features, or the ability to navigate links in a web page, or the ability to configure or edit your list of feeds.

You can also pin-lock access to an individual feed or website, but you must configure that at the individual feed settings. This can be useful if for example you have a feed with explicit language and you want your child to have access to other feed content (such as the LEGO feed provided in the demo).

Remember your PIN. If you forget it, you will have to delete and re-install feedHopper.
The restrictions currently available are as follows:

1) Add or Edit Entries. Any attempt to add or edit the feedHopper Main List will present the user with the passcode unlock screen. This is perhaps the most important restriction as it prevents your child from inserting new URLs, potentially pointing to websites unfamiliar to you the parent.

2) Navigate Web Links. Turn on or off the ability of the child to visit web links embedded within RSS feeds or web pages that are allowed by the parent. If this ability is disabled, touching any HTML link will be disallowed.

3) Tweet Articles. Selecting the tweet button at the bottom of a web page or RSS article will present the user with the passcode unlock screen.

4) Email Articles. Any in-app email option (for example, the email button at the bottom of an RSS article) will present the user with the passcode unlock screen.

We will be adding more restriction options over time.

If Parental Controls are enabled and any feedHopper entries are configured with “Passcode Protect” option (see Advanced Options under the Edit Entry page), then accessing that entry from the main page will present the user with a passcode unlock screen. Further, any autosearch or search access will also require the passcode as potentially any private material will be present in the Article database.

Parental Controls are useful beyond just safe browsing for children. One common usage of Parental Controls is to enable all options except the Tweet and Email ones. This allows you to hand your iPad running feedHopper to others without the concern that they may accidentally send email or tweet something using your account.

Adding an Item

Want to add your own stuff? Its pretty easy. On the Main List panel, locate the Plus button. Touching that will pop up a list of options for adding:

Adding Items

If you know the RSS or Webpage URL and wish to enter it directly, go ahead and touch “Manual Add”. This will insert a default item and bring up the Item Edit display (more on that later).

Scan Website

You have some other options however. You can choose to scan a website for feeds by selecting the Scan Website option:

Scanning for Feeds

You will be presented with a dialog where you can enter a website URL to scan. feedHopper will take its time and analyze the webpage for feeds. Please note that the site may still have feeds even if the scanner fails, but this is at least an easy thing to try and we hope you find it useful.

Once it finds feeds, it will list them. You can check or uncheck them depending on whether you want to add them to feedHopper or not. The little toolbar buttons on the upper left are just quickies for managing checking (check All, invert, check None). Note that if you already have a feed that it finds, that feed will not be shown.

Touching “close” will add the checked feeds. When you are returned to feedHopper, the newly added feeds will begin downloading their initial content.

Alas, there are more ways to add 🙂 Read on.

Feed Discovery

Don’t know where to go for feeds, but you have an idea of what you like? Perhaps you love golf, or tech news, or traditional news? feedHopper provides a discovery mechanism where you can browse our huge database of feeds by category and pick and choose what you want. In fact, if you want to add your favorite sites, just let us know and we will expand our database.

Discover new feeds

The adding mechanism is the same as the website scanning feature. Just touch the feed you want and a checkmark will appear (touch again to remove the checkmark). If you have an item checked, a blue “save” button will appear. Touch that button to add the checked feeds to feedHopper.

Note that feedHopper will then remove these items. It will only show feeds in discovery that you do not already have.

When you are done adding feeds, just touch the close button. You will be returned to feedHopper and these new feeds will begin downloading their initial content.

Import from Server or Clipboard

You can share your feedHopper setup (and flitter! if you use that). You can import an OPML XML file directly from the network, or pasted from your clipboard using Mail. The dialog looks very similar to the other adding screens.

For the server import option, you have a URL entry field where you specify the path to the file. You can point to our sample file for the Flitter! iPhone app here to get the idea:

http://www.dyerware.com/flitter_opml.xml

Importing from the clipboard is even simpler. If you have copied an OPML file to your clipboard, presumably by receiving it as an attachment in your Mail app, you can visit this option to extract the items. To copy OPML items into your clipboard from the Mail app, use the select-all/copy mechanism. Make sure you only copy the OPML xml content (which is typically sent as an attachment), and not the body of the email itself.

Both import options provide the traditional list of items with the checkmark option for selecting which ones you want. If items are redundant (you already own them), they will not be listed.

Don’t know what an OPML file is? Don’t worry. You can exchange feeds with other feedHopper and Flitter! users via email. Just go to your global settings Export options and send a friend your feed list. If they reciprocate, you can use the import from clipboard option to add the feeds your friend sent you that look interesting.

Import from Other RSS Readers

You can import from other RSS readers if they export their content in the standard OPML file format. This includes Google Reader, Flitter!, and more. Once you have the OPML file, just email it to your iPad and from there, use the Import From Clipboard feature.

Or, alternatively, you can place said file somewhere on the network and use the Import From Server feature.

Editing, Rearranging, or Removing Items

Editing your Items

Ok so you want to get rid of a feed, or you want to move things around, or you want to tweak one a bit. No problem. On your Main List panel, touch the filing cabinet in the toolbar at the bottom, and the list will go into edit mode. To conclude editing, click on the blue “done” button in the upper right corner.

The picture on the left highlights some key items to take note of.

Note that each item has a red round button on the left. This is to delete the item. Click on it and a red Delete button will appear To delete, confirm by touching the delete button. To change your mind, just touch the red round button again, or anywhere else BUT the red Delete button 🙂 Note that once a feed is deleted, the article database is also purged of its articles. Also take note that you cannot delete the special feedHopper auto-search fields (such as the Article Value).

To move an item up or down, touch and drag the handle bar on the right (the square with three horizontal lines). Let go when the item is where you want it to be.

Then finally, to edit the item’s settings, just touch the item’s name. This will bring up the Item Edit dialog where you can rename it, change its icon, etc. And just as with the Delete option, you cannot edit the special auto-search items (such as Article Vault).

Editing an Item

There are loads of options to tweak to your liking for an item. When your Main List is in edit mode (by touching on the filing cabinet button in it’s toolbar), you can touch one of your items to pull up its Details page:

Main Item Settings

There are several sub-pages with configuration items. The main one, Settings, allows you to change the title, change its type, URL, and the maximum amount of articles to keep for this item.

If you change anything on the settings page, Save and Undo buttons will appear. This only happens for the settings page as these changes can affect the database of stored articles. If you commit changes by hitting Save, and you have changed the URL or type, the articles in the database are purged and new ones are downloaded. If you touch Undo, the settings are reverted.

The second category is called Icon:

Choosing an Icon

Here, you can find and pick an icon you want to identify the item with. If you wish, you can select the “Use Site Artwork” option at the top. If you pick this, feedHopper will download an icon from the site. It can take a while, so be patient: A lot of feeds are indirect or stored at Feedburner or another third party, so feedHopper wiggles through a lot of indirection to make sure in most cases it can find the original site’s artwork.

Finally, we come to the third category, “advanced”:

Advanced Item Settings

Here, we can enable restrictions (Require Passcode). If restrictions are turned on, this means that accessing this item first prompts for your 4-digit PIN code. It also means that any auto-search is PIN-locked since those could conceivable expose content from this feed.

URL Account Option allows you to enter user and password credentials for RSS feeds that are protected. This is common for some subscription RSS feeds.

Attachment Account allows you to specify a user and password for accessing Podcasts. These credentials may or may not be the same as the RSS access itself, so we split them out into two different options.

Support And Troubleshooting

The Help Menu

Need some help? There is a Question mark button on the bottom of the Main List pane.

Here, you can get some quick links to useful features. You can email us directly from the app. This will include some diagnostics information in the email to help us with your problem.

You can also visit our support forum or the feedHopper section of our website, where you found this user guide and can locate our feedHopper FAQ.

You can purge your database, which does not affect your Main List, but it removes all downloaded content, including your vaulted articles. Support may recommend this, but we hope you don’t have to use it. We included it as a way to help users if needed.

A Hearty Thank You!

Well, that completes our tour through the feedHopper application. Thank you for your purchase, your patronage is important to us and we want to earn your future business.

To that end, all too often a purchase can fall out of favor or disappoints. Don’t let that happen with us! We want to know what we can do to make feedHopper your favorite app.

Please use our forums or email us if you have any feedback.

And finally, if you like the app, tell a friend! Use the tell a friend feature under the support popup (the question mark button) to send an email of the iTunes store link to your friends.